Someone with a vision should take on future of Portland's U.S. Custom House

View full sizeRandy L. RasmussenThe former U.S. Custom House has sat vacant at Northwest Eighth Avenue and Everett Street in
Portland for five years as federal managers seek someone to redevelop the landmark, completed in 1901. Its Italian Renaissance Revival architecture is constructed of granite, marble and terra cotta, ornamented with richly detailed columns and arches.The former U.S. Custom House is one of Portland's great old buildings and one of its great real-estate conundrums.

The 1901 landmark takes up a full block at Northwest Eighth Avenue and Everett Street and sits on the National Register of Historic Places. It's a stellar example of Italian Renaissance Revival architecture and a reminder of the days when Oregon really was the wild frontier.

View full sizeRandy L. RasmussenTime has eroded an image of the Great Seal of the United States on the exterior of a vault door at the U.S. Custom House.But for five years, federal property managers have struggled to find someone to redevelop the building. They literally have not been able to give the thing away.

"It is a very, very unique place," says Mary Senn, a property manager with the U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government's landlord. "It's going to take someone with their own unique vision."

In a city of steel, glass and brick, the Custom House is four stories of granite, marble and terra cotta, studded with the kinds of design detail builders can no longer afford: pillars adorned with gold gilt paint, rusticated walls and joints, heavy oak handrails and doors. The inner workings of each walk-in safe are adorned in neatly etched coils and curls. The interlocking U and S carved in a rooftop wall form a dollar sign.

View full sizeRandy L. RasmussenBeautiful woodwork decorates the central staircase between the second and third floor of the U.S. Custom House.Through the years, office managers added acoustic tiles and sprinklers. They divided and sub-divided rooms. But the underlying bones are still there, and still a challenge: The Custom House runs more than 100,000 square feet, but half is taken up with hallways, atriums and other open areas.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved out in 2005. Today, federal agents sometimes use it to train dogs, thus the suitcases that litter an office floor. Engineers occasionally bring new hires in for a little good-natured, are-you-sure-you're-not-afraid-of-the-dark hazing. Otherwise, it sits empty.

Four years ago, federal managers tried renting the building, which anchors the North Park Blocks where the Pearl District meets Old Town. There were two finalists: Venerable Properties, a Portland firm that specializes in saving old buildings, wanted to help the University of Oregon put a new Rose City campus in the Custom House.

That could have been perfect. Instead, the feds picked a Chicago developer who planned an 82-room "boutique" hotel -- until his funding fell through.

Last year, GSA offered to give the building to a school or nonprofit. Only one private elementary school, The International School, made a formal request. And school administrators passed after they realized that bringing the building up to modern seismic standards could run $20 million, more than twice their initial guess. (Full disclosure: Thanks to generous in-laws, my kids attend The International School.)

Now, in what feels a little last-ditch, the GSA will auction the building off online later this spring. Preservationists are in an understandable tizzy about something so precious going to the highest bidder, even if the building's national-register status and the city's historic design standards limit how much damage a clumsy developer might do. You can't raze or completely gut the building, so no velodrome.

But what? Nobody in town has the money for a new art museum. None of the region's larger employers needs a new corporate headquarters. The brains behind the planned Oregon Sustainability Center don't seem to have even glanced in the Custom House's direction. We're reaching a point where yet another upscale hotel might be the best option.

"There just doesn't seem to be any larger strategy," said Cathy Galbraith, executive director of the Architectural Heritage Center. "The entire thing seems thoughtless."

Agreed. I don't necessarily fault the federal government for sending this sublime, one-of-a-kind building through a generic and largely anonymous process. It has larger fish to filet, and enough red tape to cover all of downtown, let alone one old building.

But redeveloping a landmark like this in a responsible, respectful and publicly accessible way would be challenging even in good economic times. Someone who cares about history needs to take a more hands-on role in what's coming. Otherwise, we already might have missed the opportunity to find not just a use for the Custom House, but the best use.